Scott Westerfeld - Stupid Perfect World

Well, this was the door out of my stupid perfect world, a door for calamities and conflagrations, and for when things were on fire …

I shoved it hard, and a shrieking filled my ears. A dingy flight of stairs led upward, harsh lights flickering to life overhead. A canned voice broke into the alarm, asking the nature of the emergency, but I ignored it and dashed toward the roof. Two flights up was another door, plastered with stickers warning of high winds and low temperatures, of edges without safety rails, of unfiltered, cancer-causing sunlight—all the uncontrollable dangers of outside .

I pushed the door cautiously, but the wind reached in and yanked it open with the crash of metal. The rain tore inside, streaming across me. I was frozen for a terrified moment; the rushing blackness seemed too vast and powerful. But that calm, infuriating voice kept asking where the fire was, driving me outside.

The wind grew stronger with every step I took. A few meters from the door, my jacket was stripped from my shoulders, disappearing into the darkness. Half-frozen drops streaked out of the dark sky, battering my face and bare arms, feeding my hungry skin.

I opened up my hands to feel the rain drum against my palms, and opened my mouth to drink the cold water, laughing and wishing that Kieran Black was there beside me.

Two minutes later, security arrived and took me home.

MORE DRAMA , PEOPLE!” Ms. Parker cried.

Everyone just stared at her, swords drooping. We’d been practicing this scene for hours, trying to get the blocking right. Most of this was William Shakespeare’s fault; it’s pretty hard to switch two swords in the middle of a fight by accident . Come on.

The so-called army waiting off-stage was growing restless. Every time they got ready to march in with a warlike volley, Ms. Parker cut in, complaining about the lack of drama. Too bad nobody had taken death-by-poisoning for their Scarcity project—they could have showed us how….

“Okay, take a break,” she finally said in disgust.

Everyone headed to the green room or over to the teleporters, but I sheathed my sword and slid off the edge of the stage, climbing up through the empty seats. The quiet out here was a relief from forgotten lines, implausible blocking, and Ms. Parker’s demands for drama .

I sat down in the last row, a few seats in from the aisle, and tipped my head back. My eyes closed automatically, and I felt the soothing darkness close around me.

Sleeping, it turned out, was awesome. I was clocking six hours a night now, plus naps. The lost time was killing my grades, but I loved slipping away into oblivion and consummation.

And the psycho prince guy had been wrong to worry: Stage 5 sleep wasn’t a rub at all. It had all the drama our production was missing, and I was devoutly addicted to it.

Since that first real sleep, Maria had been reading to me every night. It was an actual olden-day tradition called “bedtime stories,” according to Maria. And even though her journal was just random sentences, she did spin stories in my head. The sound of her voice made dreams happen.

It felt like talking in Shakespeare’s old-speak, using “dreaming” to mean Stage 5. That old definition had disappeared along with sleep itself. Nowadays people only “dreamed” of bigger houses or getting famous.

But I kept wondering how close the two meanings were. Did I really want everything I saw in REM sleep? Should I risk making real what I did there, or should I keep it safely hidden in my dreams?

“Kieran,” came a whisper from right beside me.

I jumped, my eyes flying open.

“You okay?” Maria asked softly.

“Oh, sorry.” I blinked, for a moment wondering if this was real or not. “I was just napping.”

“Awesome.” Her smile glimmered in the stage lights. “How’s the Bard going?”

“Not dramatic enough for Ms. Parker.” I let out a sigh. “I’m not sure what would be, except maybe a hurricane blowing off the roof.”

“Ooh…” she breathed softly. “A hurricane would be fun.”

I smiled. She’d told me about her trip to the roof, her wild dancing and her skin hunger—all of it had wormed its way into my dreams.

She leaned in close, her breath in my ear. “I have a question for you.”

“We don’t have to whisper,” I said. “We’re on break.”

“But I like whispering. It makes things more…dramatic.”

A shiver went through me.

“Speaking of which.” Maria turned back to the empty stage, where the lights were shifting between palettes, sword-fight red to soliloquy blue. “Tonight when I read to you…maybe it would be better in person. I mean, more dramatic, from right beside your bed.”

I knew what she was asking, of course. I’d been asking it myself a moment before. But I wasn’t sure how you went from dreams to reality without the magic leaking out—or becoming too wild and powerful.

Truth was, I was kind of scared of Maria these days.

Her stare had grown more intense every day of the project. Here in the darkness of the auditorium she looked ready for one of her prized bouts of insanity. Especially if I said the wrong thing.

“Maria, it’s awesome when you read to me. I love your voice, I don’t think I could go to sleep without it. But I think that…”

“That you only like my voice ?” she asked.

“No!” My dreams had gone way beyond Maria’s voice. Images flashed in my mind’s eye, as vivid as memories of real events. But how could I say that out loud? “It’s just that…dreaming can be weird.”

Her breath caught in the dark. “You started dreaming ? Since when?”

“Since the first time you read to me,” I said.

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“Well, it’s kind of embarrassing.”

She leaned closer, her mad eyes flashing. “ What’s embarrassing?”

I squirmed in the hard wooden chair, my brain rejecting this collision between dream life and reality. I thought of how Stage 5 sleep makes your eyelids twitch, your hands quiver, and how I woke up every morning with drool on my face. Maybe that was something she’d understand?

Here in the second week, all the projects were getting weird. Barefoot Tillman’s common cold had turned freakish—her eyes were all puffy and red. Strange colors of goo ran out of her nose, and she had to carry around paper towels to collect it. Even Dan Stratovaria—his eyes were milky white and his skin riddled with white veins—steered clear of her. He’d gone blind over the weekend, but had learned to avoid the honking noises Barefoot made.

“Okay, I’ll tell you. But it’s weird.”

“Weird how?”

I swallowed. Did I really want to tell Maria about my drool? “Well, you know how Barefoot—”

“Barefoot Tillman!” she hissed. “You’re dreaming of her !”

“No! I was just—”

“Just using me!” she shrieked. “It’s my voice you go to sleep to every night!” A scream spilled from her lips and through the auditorium. “What am I, some kind of Cyrano de Bergerac for bimbos?”

“No! Um…Cyrano who?”

“You illiterate, pathetic excuse for a rogue! I can’t believe you!”

She leaped from her seat and stormed away up the aisle.

“Maria, wait!” I called. “That’s not what I—”

“Goodbye, Kieran…and have a good night !” she screamed from the exit.

The door slammed behind her, a vast boom echoing through the silent auditorium. As I slumped back into my seat, I realized that stage and audience had been reversed: the assembled cast and crew were staring at me, eyes wide and jaws dropped open.